Seamless sharing of color information, including the dispensation and receiving thereof, from one medium to another is stymied by the lack of one comprehensive color format. Thus colors look different on different display mediums as a result of being produced and processed in different environments, such as computer graphics (including web design and gaming technologies), television broadcasting, desktop publishing, photocopying, etc., that continue to utilize different standards, terminology, and methods for communicating color information.
For example, there has been no merger of the multiple standard and non-standard RGB monitor spaces into a single standard RGB color space (RGB denotes “Red Green Blue,” which is the color model used for generating video on a display screen using varying intensities of red, green and blue dots). As a result, media that purport to utilize RGB color standards utilize RGB standards and communication methodologies that are often incompatible with RGB standards utilized by other media.
Further, computer monitors use an RGB color space and televisions use a YIQ color space in North America and Japan, or a YUV color space in Europe, which is a transformed version of the RGB color space. Thus, it is not uncommon for a video game application designed and programmed on a content source computer in an RGB color space to require some colors that cannot be displayed on a gaming console such as a television (TV), or alternatively to require some colors that have a different appearance in the YIQ color space than in the RGB color space. That is, colors from the authoring environment color space do not always map properly to a destination color space.